


Ominous Horizons

by murderofonerose (atmilliways)



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Drug Use, Gen, Godklok, Possible Stolkhom Syndrome, Pre-Canon, Pre-Klok, Warning for non-graphic pet death in ch 5, kloktober 2020
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26796925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atmilliways/pseuds/murderofonerose
Summary: A loose collection of drabbles documenting the signs of the approaching Metalocalypse. Some heeded, some . . . not so much.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 8





	1. Reefer Percussions

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Kloktober 2020 day 3 prompt, "Ocean or outer space." Eventually I will run out of ways to answer these prompts with _Both, both is good;_ today is not that day.

At the end of the night, after countless colorful drinks with bright umbrellas and long straws . . . and shots, and lines, and miscellaneous other things swallowed or inhaled . . . he waded out into the ocean. It was shallow all along the shore here, felt like he had sloshed along for miles and the water was still only up to his knees. What island was this? What ocean was this? No fucking clue, just the way he liked it. Everything at a comfortable distance, just like the shore and his dumbass passed out bandmates who couldn’t hold their booze the way he could. 

It was dark on the water, and yet when he raised his head he looked up into a second ocean made entirely of light. After a long moment of contemplation he decided it was just the night sky, clearer than he had ever seen it before—or maybe he had, and then forgotten it. A fresh wonder, each and every time. There was so little artificial light out here that his own eyes were a telescope staring straight out into space, looking directly at the Milky Way or whatever the fuck like no one ever had before. 

If he kept wading, would he end up in the depths of the ocean or floating in a vacuum amongst the stars? Either or. It sounded kind of cool. 

But he kept looking up, for now. Maybe he swayed a bit, dreads dangling down his back like the pendulums of many clocks. Tick tock. A gear in the wheel of a clock—

— _Klok of bone and fire, it’s hungry mouths fed by imps with coal shovels, counting down. Each strike of the hour called out in screams of pain and despair. No clockmaker had ever touched its inner workings; it had been made not by hands but as the terrible price of Old Powers invoked. The one who made it could not perceive it, for its toll sounded in warning for his victims only._

_No human being feared mortality, not really. They merely heard the Klok, and trembled for terror of what the midnight hour would bring._

_And the Klok, an eldritch thing that wished to be no more than those that heard it wished to hear, turned its empty, bleeding sockets down to perceive what stood before it without quavering. He felt his bandmates standing to either side, and then he could see nothing but a searing red that lifted his feet from the ground, that he did not know would ever return him towards his body. The not knowing was the price_ they _paid for a chance of defeating the H—_

—He fell back into himself when the sway carried him too far, or a roll of surf gave a slightly harder push, or both, and he pitched over into the sea. A moment later he popped back out of the shallow water, hacking and coughing and feeling considerably more sober than was necessary. 

What the _fuck_ had that been? He tried to remember if he’d taken any hallucinogens lately and came up unsure. It sure as hell had _felt_ like a bad trip, though. There was a sick feeling in his stomach the likes of which he hadn’t felt since . . . since. . . .

Since right after Seth had burned down the garage, from the exact moment that he, Pickles, had known he was about to be in deep, deep trouble. 

He turned and coughed the last several hours’ worth of drinks and snacks up into the ocean, wiped the leftovers out of his goatee with a wet, salty hand, and looked around for the shore. When he saw the torches and colorful bar lights on the beach, he started wading back to shore like a man out to sea and not a drop left to drink. In the distance, he heard the shrill yowl of that cat Toki had insisted on bringing along. 

Everything would feel a lot better once he’d never have to remember this bad trip anymore.


	2. Death Is Your Gift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magnus had laid the groundwork pretty well. After the first week or so he’d started helping Toki shave and trim his hair; it was hard to keep track of time in a windowless basement when it didn’t even look like much time was passing.
> 
> Warning for possible mild Stockholm Syndrome. Except it’s Toki, so... Oslo Syndrome?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Kloktober 2020 day 4 prompt, "Villains or family." Toki isn't totally clear on which is which anymore, so I'm still serving up both.

Magnus had laid the groundwork pretty well. After the first week or so he’d started helping Toki shave and trim his hair; it was hard to keep track of time in a windowless basement when it didn’t even look like much time was passing. Abigail, too, had received makeshift salon treatment, although she had been allowed to do her own shaving under female guard. 

So when he’d been rescued, and was recovering in a clean white hospital room with floor to ceiling views of Mordland grounds, and his bandmates told him how long it had been, he didn’t quite believe them. It had seemed like a lot longer—and he couldn’t ask Abigail for her opinion because she was convalescing at a hospital closer to her parents and her sister’s family. 

_You’re just like me, a victim of the band._

And although much of what had gotten him through that long, horrible captivity had been daydreaming about early days when he had first been inducted into Dethklok, his found family . . . there were moments when he wondered. 

They had left him there. They had left him there for _so long._ As soon as Toki had gotten his hands on an e-reader with a WiFi connection, he’d looked up all the news articles he could find about what his “brothers” had been up to in his absence. 

The ones about being under the influence in public were oddly touching. He understood the principle of getting fucked up to avoid thinking about something awful, and the other four members of Dethklok had spent a lot of time in the public eye really, _really_ fucked up. 

But some of the other stuff just made his blood boil. Like jacking off on Bozo’s grave. _Really_ , Nathan? Had that _really_ been necessary? 

They’d come for him eventually, though. He could tell approximately when they’d decided to based on when his search started turning up fewer results. He could also tell, based on some of the photos from just before that point and comparing them to the leaner, more focused men that had rescued him, that they’d done a lot of physical training to get ready. So there was that. Eventually, they had started taking his kidnapping very seriously indeed. 

_Is that really better, though?_

Sometimes Toki had to hit the morphine button until he didn’t hear Magnus’ voice anymore, saying those insidious, I’m-on-your-side things in his ear. Sometimes he talked back out loud, which made the nurses and orderlies jumpy and was probably why the doctors started adjusting his meds to include shit like Prozac and Risperdal.[1] He googled what they were for one day and cracked the e-reader screen beyond repair; the next day Skwisgaar visited, and the day after that returned and handed him a new one, blissfully without comment. 

_You’re not crazy, you’re just in a toxic environment._

Well, Toki thought bitterly, that was nothing new. Family is people whats treat you like shit, right?

Admittedly, his dreams lost some of their knife-edge sharpness after being on the meds for a while, and he slept better. 

The only nightmare that kept troubling him was one where the details always changed, but the constant was that Murderface (always Murderface, never any of the others) tried to kill him. With knives, with fists—once it was a terrifyingly real scene where the bassist was in his hospital room holding a pillow over his face. Those dreams always ended before he actually died, open ended and dangling. Toki thought about that a lot in his waking hours. 

But he didn’t wake up screaming anymore, and the doctors told him that was progress. Whenever Pickles visited, he always talked hopefully about Toki being able to come home soon. The rest of the guys would nod along, if they were there. And something always tugged hard in his chest— _home_. 

He wanted, more than anything, to finally go home. 

And if he was relieved that Murderface never seemed to visit him alone, he never commented on it.

* * *

1Prozac, a brand name for Fluoxetine, is a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) that can treat depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), bulimia nervosa, and panic disorder. Risperdal, a brand name for Risperidone, is an antipsychotic that can treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and irritability caused by autism. I have also seen it prescribed irl to help OCD and weird sleep stuff.Return to text


	3. The High and the Holy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can still remember the first time he had seen the prophecy wall. Little wonder that he can—it’s the first of many rites of passage, similar to something he had once read about in a book, called “first communion.” It was anyone’s first taste of what it truly meant to live in the Church of the Black Klok.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Kloktober day 7 prompt, "Prophecy or vacation time." I went with prophecy. Why is this one in present tense when I've mostly been writing in past tense lately? Who knows. Maybe it just knows a thing or two more about looking towards the future than the others.

He can still remember the first time he had seen the prophecy wall. Little wonder that he can—it’s the first of many rites of passage, similar to something he had once read about in a book, called “first communion.” It was anyone’s first taste of what it truly meant to live in the Church of the Black Klok. 

He had stood before it, fighting a seven year old’s natural urge to pick his nose because this was a  _ very special occasion _ , with everyone watching, and had known in his heart that he would not be a cook, or a librarian, or a warrior, or any of the other myriad jobs available in the Church’s sub-oceanic caverns. Somehow he’d known from that moment that he would be a priest, though he had never thought so before that moment and felt no particular religious fervor. It wasn’t that he believed, particularly; he just knew. 

Now, he stands before it again, sixteen years old and wearing the robes of a pre-initiate. It is his day of Confirmation. He is alone and supposed to be meditating in preparation for the official recognition as an adult in the eyes of the Church. Instead, he looks at the old paintings. 

Sometimes, if he stares long enough and lets his eyes relax, he can almost see flickers of movement, as though the figures are wavering between multitudes of potential futures all at once. That they do not move despite this is a kind of motion of its own, the lapping of many waves at the edge of a pool, but layered so as to all be frozen together in the same instant like a kaleidoscope in uncharacteristic focus. 

Perhaps after his Confirmation he will ask one of the lower priests about this, and see what they make of it. 

He drops his eyes back to his hands, folded across his knees. There is still no question in his mind that he will become a priest himself. Part of him does regret this, because it will mean giving up his friends . . . and one closest friend in particular that he feels quite strongly for, but there is no room for these sorts of personal relationships in the life ahead of him. Before his first glimpse of the Wall, he had always assumed he’d stay with his family, tending as they had for generations to the vast caverns of lemon groves that the Church uses for everything—to flavor the fish they eat, to remove stains, even for use in the bars of soap. He likes tending to the trees; his father has always told him he’s a natural at it. 

There are many things about his earlier life that he will miss. This is his time to reflect on them, to truly decide if he is committed to his choice, because soon he will take his vows and there will be no turning back. To take the vows and then later leave the priesthood would mean leaving the Church forever; his family would not take him back, his friends would be friends no longer. 

It is not to be taken lightly. 

But he isn’t taking it lightly. He has to do this, even if he doesn’t understand why. This pull in his gut, the quiet sense of recognition when he looks at the Wall . . . it means something. It is important. 

There is a small sound from the other end of the cavern, and he raises his head from contemplation of his hands. 

“It’s time, Ish.”

The childhood nickname brings a twitch to his lips; after being confirmed, he will have left that behind too. Well. Some things, he thinks, he can bear to live without. 

Ishnifus stands, rolls up his prayer mat, and nods respectfully to the Wall. They will see each other again, for better or for worse. 

And then he goes to join the Church of the Black Klok as a fully fledged adult with a long, long path ahead of him to walk. 


	4. What I Ams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skwisgaar slouches in a window seat until his eyes are even with the window. It feels good to have a guitar in his hands again—feels more like home than his mother’s house, even with the brief step-father addition. He does a few warmups and is pleased to find that he has no trouble getting up to his usual speed despite the break in playing. When he’s satisfied that he’s still got it, he starts picking out one of the songs on the new album, strings quivering sweetly and his fingers flying. . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Kloktober 2020 day 13 prompt, "Playing music or cooking." I went with the former.

It happens for the first time in the Dethjet after Sweden. Murderface is nursing two black eyes, bruised ribs, and more besides from Pickles and Toki’s outbursts. Nathan is ignoring everyone on the grounds that everyone has been fucking stupid lately. The other two are in the back of the plane, sulking and getting high on quaaludes. 

Skwisgaar slouches in a window seat until his eyes are even with the window. It feels good to have a guitar in his hands again—feels more like home than his mother’s house, even with the brief step-father addition. He does a few warmups and is pleased to find that he has no trouble getting up to his usual speed despite the break in playing. When he’s satisfied that he’s still got it, he starts picking out one of the songs on the new album, strings quivering sweetly and his fingers flying—

_ —Over mountains and ocean, Mordhaus drawing steadily into view as— _

He abruptly stops playing. Rubs at his eyes as though they’re the problem, when really it was a full body experience of wind rushing over and in and through and beneath. What the fuck?

Gingerly, Skwisgaar sets the guitar in the adjacent empty seat, buckles it in, and takes a restless nap for the rest of the flight. It’s several hours before their fortress home can be seen iut the windows. 

The next time, he does it to see if it will happen again. This time he’s in his room, going right into one of his solos off an earlier album, and the flood of images and sensation comes—

— _ Immediately, Toki jumps out a window, fleeing some creepy bitch who wants to make a baby, which is intimately relatable. The landing is softened by bouncing off a cloth awning into a dumpster. Meanwhile, Murderface is in a different hotel getting clubbed in the dick again. Guess that Ladymates thing didn’t really work out then, huh. Certainly not for Murderface, who moves on to suing the band over residuals he doesn’t deserve and failing even more epically in a misguided label startup before he comes crawling back— _

Back into himself, and Skwisgaar drops the guitar and rubs hard at his eyes again. This is so fucked up, he’s too sober to deal with this shit. 

Somehow he’s barely surprised when it all turns out to be exactly what he’d seen. He makes some disparaging remarks about Get Thee Hence before they get themselves killed by angry Dethklok fans, but his heart isn’t in it. This is all just too weird. 

It keeps happening, though. The stuff he experiences while he plays (not just anything, it only seems to work with Dethklok music) keeps actually happening. At first he kind of gets a rush from knowing what’s going to happen, although he misses the whole Israel Syria thing in an experience that reminds him how simultaneously thrilling and terrifying it is to  _ not _ know. 

And he can’t tell anyone. It sounds too fucking crazy to be believeable. Half the time  _ he _ doesn’t even believe it, and yet, deep down, he trusts it anyway. Call it a gut instinct. 

The longer he plays for, the farther the visions stretch. He goes through a phase of not wanting to miss anything for fear of getting caught up in a future event without noticing the lead-in clues, like he did with Toki’s fucking tell-all book bullshit. This leads to drinking way too much coffee so he can be  _ awake  _ and  _ alert _ all the time, and some unfortunate teeth bleaching choices during the whole plastic surgery debacle. It doesn’t work anyway; he sees the awful “vacation” the new producer will send them on coming, but also knows that it will  _ work _ . There’s a growing feeling of impending doom growing in the pit of his stomach every time he has another vision, like they have to get the next album done ASAP before  _ something _ happens. 

The worst part is not knowing what that something is, so he keeps playing. He throws himself into the new album as much as he can without making his bandmates suspicious—no one wants “a real go-getter” on the team, making everybody else look bad. The band balance is already off kilter enough with the tension stewing between Nathan and Pickles. 

Then there’s the problem of Magnus. Skwisgaar saw that crusty old fuck coming from miles away, but, again, he couldn’t have said anything. Maybe someone else could’ve gotten to Toki’s insulin shot in time—maybe he could have, like he had with the defibrillator!—but was it worth the risk? Indecision has frozen his tongue, and now Magnus is back in their lives. Or mostly in Toki’s life, but whatever. He can’t decide if the bad news vibes he’s getting about this development is from the music visions or because Dethklok’s  _ former _ lead guitarist pings on his insecurities. 

The thing is, Skwisgaar decides one night while deep into a handle of vodka while staring at his Explorer sitting innocuously in its stand on the other side of his bedroom. The thing is. . . . Okay, so say that playing it really does show him the future somehow. That’s fucking weird—he doesn’t ask why  _ him _ , because come on, but he does wonder why  _ now _ —but it’s been happening for long enough by this point that he’s just rolling with it. In for a krona, in for a million USD. So say it really is the future he’s seeing. And then he knows it was seeing the future, because that’s what ends up happening. 

But if he tries to change something, what happens then? Sometimes the stuff he sees coming is bad, but what if he pushes against it and somehow makes it worse? Because as soon as he tries it, suddenly his road map is gone and he has no idea what to expect next. 

So he decides not to even go there. Not unless things get  _ really _ bad. 

And then, well. Things get really bad. He spends the entire Dethsub recording ride steeped in what Nathan’s going to do, and how Pickles is going to react, and how it will spell out the end of Dethklok . . . but also that they’ll still end up right back on the sub together after the final concert. What’s he supposed to do with all that, besides spending the entire fucking fancy dinner party the label is making them go to monosyllabic and too queasy to eat very much, watching everything start to go to shit. 

The real reason he goes in with Nathan on the whole “new sound” bullshit is because maybe it’ll mean not having these visions every time he plays anymore. 

Skwisgaar doesn’t see anything definite while they’re playing the final concert, but the bad feeling in the pit of his stomach is back again. It’s like whatever’s coming is too big to make out up close and they’re right up against it now—

— _ Now he has an eagle eye view of a crowd of people in folding chairs, and Nathan at a podium, giving a speech. There's a coffin behind him. . . . Who the fuck died? He can make out himself, Pickles, and Murderface in the crowd. Toki is across the aisle with Magnus and Abigail. Charles is there too. No one directly important, then, which is good.  _

_ So why does he have such a bad feeling— _

—Feeling the impact of Cornickleson’s body hitting the stage in front of them. Well, that answers that question. 

He doesn’t say a fucking word the whole time Charles is walking them through creepy underwater caves, or when the bearded Santa Clause guy says weird shit to Nathan about some sort of message. It’s kind of insulting, really, considering the shit that’s been screwing with his practice schedule for what seems like forever now. And then for Santa to ask them to think of each other as brothers? Fuck no, he’s not doing nothing for that old guy. 

Still, Skwisgaar almost says something to Toki about Magnus before the funeral. The bad feeling is so strong that he chokes on it and doesn’t. 

He wishes, afterwards, that he’d said something. He wishes it hard enough that he shuts his guitar in a closet and drowns himself for a while in substances and pussy, because Toki is probably dead and he probably could have done something about it and  _ no one even knows _ , which makes it even worse. 

That’s why it means something when, after they’ve finally agreed to finish the search for Toki themselves, dried out and done all the training that’s asked of them, he gets his guitar back out for the first time in a long time and plays I Tamper With the Evidence at the Murder Site of Odin all the way through. Twice. If ever there was a time to finally push against this shit and really use what he knows, it’s now. 

It scares the shit out of him, but this guitar god is finally fucking ready. 


	5. A Night to Remember, Forgotten With Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathan Explosion was a quiet child. His first words had come so late—at age three—that he’d been able to taste it in the back of his throat, bubbling up like bile that didn’t have any taste. Like a volcano about to erupt. That first word had been a long, wailing, “Noooooooooooooo!”
> 
> His parents had been so excited that they didn’t remember what he’d been responding to. In fact, their elation completely eclipsed the truth, which was that they’d never known in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Kloktober 2020 day 14 prompt, "Pre-klok or post-klok." It's preklok time, baby! I've had this one in my head for a long time, and it might make a comeback/be expanded upon if I ever finish TMTC and then get around to writing the sequel. 
> 
> **Warning for non-graphic pet death.**

Nathan Explosion was a quiet child. His first words had come so late—at age three—that he’d been able to taste it in the back of his throat, bubbling up like bile that didn’t have any taste. Like a volcano about to erupt. That first word had been a long, wailing, “Noooooooooooooo!”

His parents had been so excited that they didn’t remember what he’d been responding to. In fact, their elation completely eclipsed the truth, which was that they’d never known in the first place. 

But Nathan remembered. 

Two years after his first word, and three years after adopting a puppy (dubbed Spot after the dog in a book that two-year-old Nathan had pointed adamantly to), he woke up in his big boy bed with the strangest feeling. Every experience of his short life so far had a novel shininess to it, like a brand new toy on Christmas morning. This feeling was more like. . . . getting the same present twice, and all he knew for sure was that he hadn’t liked it the first time, either. 

He got out of bed, dug intently around in the child-sized dresser at the foot of it, and eventually found the jacket he was looking for. It was black denim, and he would probably outgrow it soon, but that wasn’t important yet. This one was his favorite, and thus carried some obscure sense of safety. He put it on over his blue airplane pajamas and trotted in his slippers out of his room, down the hall, and to the front door, where he piled several pairs of his dad’s shoes on top of one another and stood on them to get eye-level the doorknob, because it was easier to unlock that way. 

It wasn’t a cold night; the jacket was just for comfort. He hesitated at the end of the driveway, just standing there and breathing in the humid Florida air. 

Then something clicked. His internal compass settled, and he turned left and marched into the night. 

There were other turns, after that. Nathan walked for a very long time, until he was distantly sure that he didn’t know how to find his way back, but he didn’t mind. The important thing was to get there . . . wherever there was.  _ That  _ was what he minded. ‘There,’ in his head, was something unpleasant, but he knew he had to get there and see for himself. 

He knew before it came into sight that he’d remembered correctly, because he heard the whimpering. The rest was like remembering all over again, except backwards, because this was the first time he’d  _ done _ the thing he was remembering. With renewed urgency his little legs broke into a run, and before he knew it he was there, in the road, and Spot was hurt and looking up at him with big, sad eyes, wanting to not be in trouble for digging his way under the fence and out of the backyard again, wanting to not be in pain. The dog’s side was the wrong color and one of his legs was bent wrong. 

Wide-eyed, Nathan crouched down to pat his head, a Spot whined pitifully and licked at his fingers. The boy’s eyes welled up but his lips stayed pressed together, but he didn’t make a sound. He’d done his crying out two years ago. Now, as Spot stopped licking his hand and closed his eyes, Nathan just felt . . . alone. Cold despite the warm night, despite the jacket. 

“Hey, ah—Kid, are you alright?”

There was a man standing under the nearest street lamp, face shadowed oddly directly beneath the weak light source. He looked up and down the street, as if expecting Nathan’s parents to run up after him at any moment; when this failed to happen, he stepped hesitantly out into the street. 

“Oh damn,” the man muttered when he saw what Nathan was crouching over. “Is this your dog?”

Nathan, sniffling and not wanting to admit he was, thought about the question for a moment, then nodded. “He’s Spot,” he said, pointing. 

“Spot. Okay.” The man touched his face, like Nathan’s preschool teacher did whenever she adjusted her glasses, except he wasn’t wearing glasses. He seemed to notice this too, and stopped doing it. “Well, it, ah, looks like Spot’s been hit by a car. Is there anyone with you? To help get him home?”

Despite a lifetime of being lectured by his mother about Stranger Danger, Nathan shook his head no. Because there  _ wasn’t  _ anyone with him—but also because there was no point bringing Spot home. Spot was already gone. And the important thing was that he’d remembered, and made the last two years really count. 

The bad part of what he’d remembered had been seeing his best friend in the world hurt, and the first realization that when toys broke they went in the trash . . . and everyone in his life, where did they go if they broke? Because when toys went in the trash, they were gone. They  _ never _ came back. 

In the years to come, his parents would try to explain funerals and why his grandparents weren’t around anymore, and he wouldn’t give them the reaction they were expecting . . . because he’d already figured it out. He was a big boy; he’d learned to stop crying over broken toys, knowing there would be others to play with and be made happy by, even if they were different. Death was pretty much the same thing. 

So when the man went to reach for Spot, Nathan stopped him with a flat, “No.”

The man looked at him, surprised. “No?”

Nathan shook his head.  _ It’s okay, it’s all the same to Spot now, _ he meant, but didn’t yet have the self-awareness to string the words together. 

“I gotta go home,” he said instead. 

“Oh, ah. . . . Do you know the way?”

“Uhh. . . .” Nathan hesitated. His internal compass was spinning . . . but it always did that, just needed the right conditions for him to be able to concentrate and let it settle. And right now, feeling alone was making it hard to do that. 

The man sighed. “I, ah, guess I can walk you home, then. Want to try? If not, ah, I can try to call someone. I think I have a phone around here somewhere. . . .”

Despite how he felt, Nathan found himself giggling at the idea of this guy having a phone in his pocket. Phones were big clunky things with cords, much too big for pockets. Everyone knew that.

He took the funny man’s hand, paused, and felt something click. His internal compass settled, and he tugged on the hand and pointed. “This way.”

Again, they took many turns on the way back to Nathan’s house. They walked for a long time, but the return trip didn’t seem quite as long with company and Nathan was glad for that. He kept glancing up at the man, who wore a suit and tie and didn’t seem very talkative. That was fine, because Nathan wasn’t either. Silence, like death, wasn’t really so bad when you got down to it; it was just something that happened, sometimes. 

“Is it close?” the man asked finally, sounding awkward, like he wasn’t used to talking to kids and wasn’t sure if he was doing it right. “Can you tell if we’re almost there?”

“Yeah,” Nathan replied simply. They rounded the last corner and he could see his house at the end of the block, all lit up. His parents must have woken up and realized he was missing . . . which probably meant he was going to get in trouble. He sighed, annoyed, because he knew they wouldn’t get it even if he did try to explain. Adults never listened to kids about stuff. 

The man glanced down at him. “Problem?”

Nathan sighed again, more heavily than any five year old had a right to. “No. It’s right there.” He let go of the man’s hand to point. 

But as soon as he let go, it seemed, the man was gone. Nathan blinked, looked around, and saw nothing. With so much on his young mind already, this barely struck him as odd. The man in the suit had been uncomfortable, so once he was no longer needed he had left. 

The little boy shrugged and walked the rest of the way home on his own. It wasn’t that far, after all, and he was starting to feel sleepy again. It was time to go back to bed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one more thing to add... Ghosts aren’t anchored in time they way the living are, they’re more anchored by the living. (My view of ghosts is heavily influenced by The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor right now, heh.)


	6. Tokens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There hadn’t been any toys when Toki had been growing up, so he’d learned to make his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Kloktober 2020 day 21 prompt, "Childhood or hobbies." It's Toki time.
> 
> One day I woke up with the unshakable headcanon that no, Toki did not have a specific homemade doll that looked like Rockso as a child. He didn’t have any toys or friends so he made his own, and as he did end up making friends later in life he made little straw dolls to represent all of them, too. Any one of those dolls is a stand-in for what he’s really terrified of losing, which is the interpersonal connections he’s built over the years to keep himself mentally afloat. Then he was hallucinating his childhood punishment hole, the Rockso doll was there because Rockso was one of those connections that at the time he was so worried about losing.

There hadn’t been any toys when Toki had been growing up, so he’d learned to make his own. He’d had to keep them secret and hidden though. His parents had found some of his earliest creations once and punished him for “the making of idolatrous figures.” And maybe they were right, a little; on some level, he did think of them as good luck tokens. 

Over the years, he became skilled in squirreling materials away—bits of straw, string, twigs, unwanted bits of fabric—and twisting them into little dolls. He made dolls of himself and his parents, of the villagers he sometimes saw when sent into town for errands, of members of his father’s congregation. He even made one for the monster he saw in the frozen lake once, with arms and legs like a man and a bloodless, wrinkled face. No one believed him when he warned them, and his parents punished him for that too, but when he was in his punishment hole that night he made the doll, dug a deep grave in the earthen floor, and buried it under as many small rocks as he could find to weigh it down. Whether he’d imagined it in the first place or not, he never saw the monster again. 

When he left home, he took his little Toki doll with him. All the others stayed behind, and he absolutely didn’t spend half the journey to America checking the pack that held all his earthly possessions making sure that none had managed to follow him. 

In America, he was free. Homeless and surviving on panhandling, shelter donations, and dumpster diving, but still free. He still collected odds and ends without really thinking about it, making tiny likenesses of everyone he met who helped him as gifts. On the advice of a shelter volunteer, he started making generic ones and selling them on the street for pennies. Between that and collecting bottles and cans to redeem for money, he eventually scraped up enough to buy an eighth-hand guitar from some high school kid who wanted to piss off _his_ parents. 

He learned to play by trial and error. Playing for handouts paid better than little trash dolls, but he kept making them. The night he auditioned for Dethklok, he made four new dolls. Special ones. He actually washed the materials he made them from, and used mostly metal wire and other things that wouldn’t rot, so he could keep them for a long time. The band—his bandmates now, his brothers—were letting him crash on their couch until they all “made it big.” Toki propped the four new dolls on the end of the couch arm and pulled out the little doll of himself that he’d carried all the way from Norway. 

Then he made a fifth doll. A new representation of himself, to match the new ones. And he threw the old straw thing away, where no one would ever find it. 

For a long time after that, Toki didn’t make any more dolls. Instead he had puzzles, and model airplanes, and LEGO sets, and pretty soon the entire goddamn world at his fingertips. (Though he made one of Rockso, because man that clown really made him laugh.)

He felt sick with guilt when Charles died, because he never made one of him, but “I misses him, Pickle” was the closest he could get to articulating it. They wouldn’t understand— _he_ didn’t really understand it, this childhood superstition that he couldn’t seem to shake. He sure as hell made one as soon as Charles miraculously returned, though. It felt like a second chance. 

He never made one of Magnus. Probably for the best, in the end. 

He told Abigail about the dolls, a week or so into their captivity. There was nothing else to do. So he helped her collect some things from around their cell and twist it into a little thing, a child’s toy, and tie it together with pulled strands of her hair. She helps him do the same, despite his weak protests. After all, there was nothing better to do while they waited to see if they were going to die. 

They didn’t die. They probably should have, from infection or neglect or just plain despair at how long they languish there before rescue. But they didn’t, and he regretted saying anything—not because he’d rather die, but because he would never know if it was luck or this dumb shit from his childhood. 


End file.
